Amy J. Marin, a Psychology 101 professor at Phoenix College in Arizona has come up with a truly unique way to connect with her students. She created a fictional assistant named Cliff and gave him his own account on Facebook (Cliff Stroop). She then, at least initially, used the account as a means of disseminating course information. She's documented her experiment on the American Psychology Association's web site.
How Cliff Stroop Helped Both Students and the Teacher
As part of the exercise, Marin actually created a mannequin to represent Cliff and then went so far as to give him an age (25). She also photographed "him" for his profile and even made a video of him doing various recreational activities. Then, as a last touch, she had him list his status on his Facebook page as being in a "complicated" relationship with "Ruby Skinner" an Avatar that she used in a different class.
Marin says that one of the things that surprised her most about her experiment was how quickly the students took to Cliff, and how, despite being told very clearly that Cliff was nothing more than a creation of their instructor's imagination, they still disassociated him from her to the extent they came to actually talk about her to him at times.
Over the course of the class, she wound up using Cliff to disseminate information, as was originally intended, but also found if Cliff offered assistance or study hints, students were more likely to accept it. Then, to make things more interesting she also had him start posting little notices she called Cliff-Notes, little pearls of wisdom the students could use not only in her class but to help them adjust to college (since most were Freshman). She followed that up by posting notes she called Cliff-Hangers, little questions about real life scenarios that gave the students food for thought for the next class session.
How Cliff Stroop Went over With the Students
Because she did not have Cliff "friend" any of the students, but instead relied on them to send friend requests to him, just 61% of students participated; those that did were asked to evaluate what they thought of Cliff and how he had been used in the class. Marin says that comments were overwhelmingly positive and as such has continued to use Cliff in all of her Pysch101 courses.
In the report, Marin has also outlined a path other instructors can follow if they'd like to try implanting a similar system of their own.
Sources
- "Beyond Social Networking: Using Facebook to Promote Student Engagement, Study Skills, and Critical Thinking" APA.org viewed August 18, 2011
Bob Yirka - Bob Yirka has written thousands of online articles and backs them up with a BS in Computer Science/MS in Information Systems Management.
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